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But the best known and most quoted pronouncement of all had come in the form of a question put by the leader of the Jersey Girls. "We simply wanted to know," Ms. Breitweiser said, by way of explaining the group's position, "why our husbands were killed. Why they went to work one day and didn't come back."

The answer, seared into the nation's heart, is that, like some 3,000 others who perished that day, those husbands didn't come home because a cadre of Islamist fanatics wanted to kill as many of the hated American infidels in their tall towers and places of government as they could, and they did so. Clearly, this must be a truth also known to those widows who asked the question--though in no way one would notice.

Who, listening to them, would not be struck by the fact that all their fury and accusation is aimed not at the killers who snuffed out their husbands' and so many other lives, but at the American president, his administration, and an ever wider assortment of targets including the Air Force, the Port Authority, the City of New York? In the public pronouncements of the Jersey Girls we find, indeed, hardly a jot of accusatory rage at the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks. We have, on the other hand, more than a few declarations like that of Ms. Breitweiser, announcing that "President Bush and his workers . . . were the individuals that failed my husband and the 3,000 people that day."

By Kristen Breitweiser

Sept. 8, 2003 |

The film "DC 9/11: Time of Crisis," which premiered Sunday night on Showtime, is a mind-numbingly boring, revisionist, two-hour-long wish list of how 9/11 might have gone if we had real leaders in the current administration. This film is rated half of a fighter jet -- since that is about what we got for our nation's defense on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

Despite the title, the film only budgets approximately 10 minutes to the actual morning of 9/11. Most of the movie is spent cataloging the myriad cabinet-level debates as to whether to declare "war" against terrorism and how to effectively sell that to the American people.

It is understandable that so little time is actually devoted to the president's true actions on the morning of 9/11. Because to show the entire 23 minutes from 9:03 to 9:25 a.m., when President Bush, in reality, remained seated and listening to "second grade story-hour" while people like my husband were burning alive inside the World Trade Center towers, would run counter to Karl Rove's art direction and grand vision.

Remember the aircraft carrier photo-op? Bush is a man of action; in fact, he is an action hero. Except, of course, when it really counts, like in those early morning hours when this country was under attack and our Commander in Chief was drinking milk and eating cookies with second graders. Can you imagine one of those second-graders years from now when they are asked where they were on the morning of 9/11? They will simply say, "I was sitting with the President reading him a story."